Translator: CinderTL
A violent jolt and a deafening crash swept through the entire cabin.
The shell ship, like a beetle swatted from the sky by an invisible giant, slammed into the ground with a bone-jarring thud.
Though the hull, forged from an exceptionally resilient material, neither shattered nor deformed upon impact, the intense weightlessness of the rapid descent and the final, gut-wrenching shock—one that felt as if it would dislodge their internal organs—left the crew disheveled and nauseated.
Roland gripped a cable bollard fixed to the deck, barely managing to steady himself.
After a brief moment of tinnitus, the surrounding sounds flooded back into his ears like a tide.
There was the faint creak of metal components under stress, the ragged gasps and curses of the grey dwarf crew, and the muffled howl of wind from outside the ship.
He shook his head to clear the lingering dizziness and swept a sharp gaze across his companions.
Avril leaned against the gunwale, her face pale, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
Galvis rubbed his throbbing temple, muttering elvish curses under his breath.
As for the others...
Roland glanced at Bronson, who was peeking out from the cabin, and Tracy, perched on his shoulder. After confirming they were unharmed, he immediately strode toward the bridge.
There, Durga stood by the central control pillar.
His rugged face was a mask of anguish and fury. His massive, fan-like hands kept slapping the now-dimmed pillar, his angry rants sounding like a dwarf's forge bellows.
"Dammit! What the hell happened? This is madness!"
Roland walked up to him and asked in a low voice, "Durga, what's going on?"
"I don't know!" Durga roared, his voice thick with frustration.
"One second we were fine, and the next—after crossing that damned rift—the core drive just choked out like it had been strangled! It felt like... the magical elements suddenly vanished, or... something interfered with them!"
He slammed his fist against the rune pillar, producing a dull thud.
"This makes no sense! Astral Navigation was fine, so why did this happen the moment we entered Aetheron..."
Thanks to his previous "interrogation" of the mind flayer prisoner, Roland wasn't completely ignorant of the shell ship's propulsion principles. He knew all too well that its core relied on a stable and active mana environment.
Mana elements receding?
A seed of doubt took root in Roland's mind.
He said no more. A strange, inexplicable feeling urged him to close his eyes and take a deep breath. He cautiously extended his senses outward, spreading them like countless invisible probes.
After a moment, in the darkness of his closed-eyed "vision," the surrounding mana environment gradually came into focus.
Yet, this sight was utterly different from anything he had ever known.
The mana elements weren't sparse or gone. On the contrary, their "quantity" was staggering. It was as if he were submerged in a boundless ocean, every inch of space filled with mana "sea water" so dense it refused to disperse.
The bizarre part was that these elements, which should have been lively and in constant flux, were now frozen in a deathly, stagnant rigidity.
They did not flow in an orderly stream but instead clumped together like viscous, unyielding gel, as if bound and entangled by countless invisible threads, creating an indescribable sense of congestion.
"Strange..."
Roland's brow furrowed, his doubts deepening.
The mana environment here was too abnormal.
Though the elemental mana was vast, it had lost its natural "vitality" and "fluidity." It was as if some invisible, powerful force had forcibly interfered with and disrupted it, turning what should have been a harmonious symphony into a chaotic mess of scattered sand.
This bizarre stagnation was more than just a perceptual judgment; it also brought a dual sense of physical and psychological discomfort, as if the surrounding air had grown heavy and foul, making even the simplest breath a chore.
Under such conditions, let alone supplying the immense and stable mana flow required by a precision construct like the Shell Ship, even...
He tried to concentrate, slowly extending a finger.
Yet, the only response to his summons was a tiny, almost imperceptible spark at his fingertip, so weak it seemed ready to extinguish at any moment.
This was a far cry from his time at the Drow Camp, where he could summon a stable orb of light with a mere thought.
Roland watched the struggling spark on his fingertip slowly fade away. He shook his head, his voice laced with gravity.
"Is even a simple trick this difficult to cast...?"
Suppressing his doubts for the moment, Roland turned to Durga, who was still inspecting the rune pillar with a pained expression. "Can it be fixed?"
Durga took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm his temper. His thick fingers traced the dimmed runes as he nodded.
"It should be fine. The core structure isn't damaged. It's just that the mana-siphoning rune circuits aren't adapted to this... stagnant environment. They need to be readjusted and recalibrated so they can 'squeeze' energy out of this godforsaken place."
He paused, a hint of frustration in his tone. "But this is delicate work. There's no rushing it. It's going to take some time."
With that, he wasted no more time. He straightened his back and let out a series of booming shouts in Dwarvish. The once-panicked grey dwarf crew quickly regained their composure.
Durga singled out several members who were clearly skilled craftsmen from his clan. The group immediately set to work, swarming around the central control pillar and key nodes of the ship's hull.
They began the tedious repairs—hammering, engraving, and discussing in low voices.
Roland turned and gave his friends, who were watching with concerned eyes, a brief explanation, soothing them and asking them to stay calm.
Only then did he truly turn his gaze beyond the shell ship to this lost world called Aetheron.
As far as the eye could see, it was an endless expanse of desolation and deathly silence.
The earth was a sickly, grayish-brown.
On the cracked, parched ground, only a few scattered clusters of strange plants struggled to survive. Their colors were dull, their forms twisted, looking more like a hybrid of metal and withered flesh than natural creations.
In the distance lay rolling, barren hills and the outlines of more collapsed, heavily weathered architectural ruins.
They stood silently in the dim light, like the skeletal remains of giant beasts, telling a tale of the tragic and devastating decay of a distant past.
An indescribable scent hung in the air—a mixture of dust, rust, and a faint, sickly sweet aroma of decaying energy.
Time seemed to have smoothed over the sharpest wounds, yet it had failed to restore life to this land. Only a bone-deep exhaustion and devastation remained.
His gaze drifted upward.
The sky above was even more unsettling than the earth below. It wasn't the familiar blue he knew, nor the grayish-white of a cloud-covered expanse. Instead, it was a turbid, churned-up dark hue, like muddy oil paint smeared across the dome of the heavens.
There was no sun, no stars—only a uniform, oppressive glimmer that emanated from nowhere.
More disturbing still, the entire sky seemed shrouded in an invisible, flowing film. His gaze could not penetrate it; he could only see light and shadow twisting and streaming across its surface, creating a suffocating sensation of being trapped inside a colossal cage or a soap bubble.
His eyes followed the unsettling sky to the distant horizon, finally coming to rest at its edge.
There, where the earth met the bizarre sky, the landscape blurred into obscurity.
An endless, translucent energy barrier seemed to stand there, like the rim of an inverted bowl, completely sealing this wasteland world off from the outside.
What lay beyond the barrier?
More desolation, or a completely different landscape?
No one knew.
All that met the eye was a blur of distorted light and shadow, and a heart-stopping void.
The legendary center of the continent did not welcome them with glorious ruins and abundant mana. Instead, it felt more like a forgotten, silent prison.
Staring at the dead, desolate wasteland before him—a place that seemed to have been abandoned by the world for countless ages—Roland thought to himself, It seems this must be the edge of the Aetheron Continent, far removed from any of the prosperous regions marked on the map.
Just as he was about to take out the map Duerden had given him to verify their approximate location, a chaotic sound approached from the distance, shattering the suffocating silence.
"Horses? No..."
Roland noticed the anomaly immediately.
For within those dull thuds of hooves, there was mixed a roar—one he vaguely recalled, yet found strangely familiar.
It wasn't the pure clatter of machinery, but a low, vibrating hum and tremor, the kind born of unstable energy coursing through a system.
He whipped his head around, his sharp gaze piercing the direction of the sound. But the next moment, his brow furrowed deeply.
On the dim horizon, a group of figures emerged.
The riders on the flanks were exactly as he'd heard: mounted on steeds. But these "horses" were grotesquely deformed.
They towered over ordinary warhorses, their muscles unnaturally knotted and bulging. Their hides were covered in a coarse, metallic-keratinous crust, and at their joints, one could see the ominous, faintly glowing growth of aberrant tissue. Their eyes were a turbid, milky white, and from their nostrils they exhaled not hot breath, but a thin mist laced with stray magical glimmers and the pungent stench of the arcane.
And the figures seated upon these monstrous mounts were even more striking.
They were all encased in heavy, scarred, and grime-streaked armor.
The design was unlike anything Roland had ever seen.
The lines were rugged and utilitarian, with complex metal conduits and piston-like structures at the joints. Some sections even retained the remnants of long-extinguished energy conduits. The overall aesthetic was cold, dilapidated, and yet radiated a dangerous industrial aura.
His gaze swept past these knight-like guards, finally focusing on the figure at the front of the party—the obvious leader.
Roland's pupils constricted.
The man wore the same unknown, battered armor, but his frame was far more massive.
What truly unsettled Roland, however...
He narrowed his eyes, focusing his vision to sharpen the distant image.
"Four... four arms?"
Indeed. The leader's shoulders were exceptionally broad, and from each side of his torso extended two armored arms.
Each limb hung naturally, clearly not mere decoration or mechanical prosthetics, but real flesh and bone.
What truly drew Roland's gaze, however, was the four-armed leader's mount.
It wasn't the same kind of bizarre steed the other knights rode, but a ferocious, power-brimming metal vehicle. It shared the streamlined base of a motorcycle, but was larger and more imposing, its lines sharper and more exaggerated. The heavy metal plating was covered in rust and gouges.
At the vehicle's core, a section shielded by a thick metal grate pulsed with an unstable, eerie purple light, the source of a low, constant thrum. Occasional sparks and solidified streams of arcane energy leaked from the grate's gaps, crackling softly in the air—a testament to the volatile magic core churning within. It was like a starved, shackled arcane construct, blending bizarrely and grotesquely into the wasteland backdrop.
As the line of ominous riders charged straight for the shell ship, Roland's eyes hardened, and he immediately shouted a warning.
"Everyone, on guard!"
Before the words had even fully left his lips, Roland's hand was already resting firmly on the hilt of the Radiant Moon Longsword at his waist. Avril silently drew her longbow, while Galvis swiftly retreated to a relatively safe corner.
Even Durga, who had been busy working, snapped his head up and grabbed the battle-axe at his feet. The grey dwarves quickly formed a simple defensive line.
Yet, to their surprise, the menacing party slowed visibly as they drew close enough to see the shell ship in full. They came to a synchronized halt nearly a hundred paces from the vessel.
The strange mounts pawed the ground restlessly, snorting breaths that glowed with magical light. The riders, their gazes hidden beneath heavy helmets, seemed fixed on the shell ship's streamlined, rune-covered hull, their posture betraying a mix of wariness and appraisal.
After a brief silence, the four-armed leader alone drove his humming mana vehicle forward a few steps.
One of his arms rested casually on the vehicle's control lever, another was propped on his armored hip, while the remaining two hung naturally at his sides. His posture was a deliberate display of composure and condescension.
He lifted his head, his faceplate-covered visage turning toward Roland and his companions, who stood ready for battle. A voice, sharp and low like metal grinding on stone, filtered through the faceplate, dripping with undisguised arrogance.
"I am Hagrid, Chief of the Rust Knight Order."
His voice echoed across the wasteland, pausing deliberately as if to emphasize the weight of his name. Then, he raised an arm, his metal-gauntleted fingers tracing a casual circle in the air, claiming the surrounding scorched earth as his domain.
"This land is under our protection and rule."
"Veilbreaker, you trespass upon our territory in such a... peculiar vehicle. What is your purpose here?"
(End of the Chapter)
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